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Jagiello-2
(Disclaimer: This is a fanwork from the Steve Jackson Forums, not part of the GURPS canon.) The Divergence In 1370, Lithuania (Litua on Jagiello-2) was the last sizable pagan power in Europe. The Grand Duke's father, Gediminas, had already ruthlessly played the card of his (and his country's) conversion for a balancing game involving his neighbors, the aggressive Catholic German knights and the Orthodox Slavs. Gediminas had made promises and then taken them back. Algirdas did the same. Then in 1370, after marrying his second Orthodox wife (and taking over her lands), he embraced Orthodoxy. This expanded his influence in the East, while exposing Litua to Polish enmity and renewed attacks by the Teutonic Knights. But later on, Algirdas converted to Catholicism, on Jagiello-2. Save that some sources say he actually died a pagan. THE CITY OF ALL FAITHS On Homeline, Lithuania finally became a Catholic power when Algirdas' son, Jogaila, married the Queen of Poland, Jadwiga, and changed his name into Wladyslaw Jagiello. His nobility first, then the rest of his people, followed suit. This made it possible for the Polish-Lithuanian Union to become a power to be reckoned with in Eastern Europe (Poland being already fervently Catholic). It also made control of the Belarussian and Ruthenian subjects more difficult, since they were Orthodox Christians. On Jagiello-2, Jogaila did convert to Catholicism, so he married Jadwiga in 1386 and later became King of Litua and Polskia. But he did not promote Catholicism in his country. Nor did he meet his bishops' demands that he persecute the pagans and oppress the Orthodox believers. By 1400, the booming capital of Litua, Vilnius, was known as "the city of all faiths". The joint forces of Polski Catholic knights, Lituan pagan bowmen and Belarussian Orthodox infantry defeated the Teutonic Knights in the battle of Grunwald, in 1410, like on Homeline. But on Jagiello-2, the Teutonic Order was destroyed. The German Knights who were willing to swear fealty to the Jagiellon Dinasty were allowed to retain their lands. Jagiello I expanded the territories held by his Union, and by his death in 1437, this went from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and from several German vassals to within 30 miles from Moscow. Secularized Power The pragmatic attitude towards religion of these early Jagellon Grand Dukes and Kings became the dynasty's trademark. In an era in which one's faith had to be the only right one, these Kings took the uncharacteristic stance of not having a state church, and not particularly favoring subjects of their own religion or language. This policy, crucially, did not remain an exception. When Elizabeth of York died in childbirth, leaving Henry VII of England heirless, the king chose a Jagellon princess, Agnieszka. Later, Henry VIII of England also chose a wife from what was the most important power in his world. England would become another kingdom in which power was secularized. Understandably, what had become known as the United Kingdom of Litua-Polskia did not take sides in the Reform and in the ensuing wars. Protestants were allowed to seek shelter in Vilnius. Similar developments took place in London, with England mostly being spared the bloodletting that affected most of Germany and France. That is not to say that these were peaceful years, because, by means of clever diplomacy by marriage, Litua-Polskia had taken control of Bohemia and Hungary, and the new enemy, the Ottoman Empire, had to be pushed back. Suleiman the Magnificent did manage to win the battle of Pécs in 1531, but his control of a Southern strip of Hungary only lasted until his premature death in 1543. The Ottomans were defeated again at the gates of Vienna in 1574 and farther South in 1593; on Jagiello-2, they faded as a threat to the Balkans after that. Meanwhile, England wasn't at peace, either, being challenged on the seas by the Iberian Empire that united the Spanish and Portuguese domains. Given the attitude of the Lituo-Polski rulers towards religion, it's no surprise that nationality and other differences mattered less than elsewhere. Loyalty to the crown and success on the battlefield were what made a commoner into a nobleman and a knight into an earl in Litua-Polskia, regardless of whether he was an Orthodox Novgorodian or a Protestant Brandenburgian. Jagiello VI knighted the first Jew in 1604 - much to the horror of conservative rulers elsewhere. The Faithful Strike Back By the mid-1600s, indeed, Iberia was the leader of the Catholic Counter-Reform. The Iberians had survived the economic crisis caused by the wars and the inflation arising from their exploitation of their American colonies. Now they launched a new crusade, and Pope Innocent X cleverly organized the alliance that would fight it. Litua-Polskia was helping their vassal state, Romania, and fighting the Turks on the coasts near Odessa. At the same time, the controversy about Swedish Pomerania had flared up in war again, too. Iberia, the Papal State and France declared war when the Austrian city of Graz rebelled against Litua-Polskia and expelled anybody who wasn't a Catholic. London remained true to its alliance with Vilnius, and soon was fighting the Iberians on the oceans and in Ireland. The Moskvites jumped in and defeated their long-time enemy in the battle of Smolensk, in 1651. The Lituo-Polskis lost Vienna in the 1653 siege, and were defeated by a French army near Braunschweig. The War of Graz, however, saw a complete reversal in 1655. That year, the English won the decisive naval battle of Hispaniola, and the Lituo-Polskis retook Prague. Meanwhile, the Huguenots revolted again in France, and so did the Dutch against their heavy-handed Iberian governors. On the contrary, the Irish uprising ended, and a Brazilian one began. The Peace of Vienna of 1659 confirmed the loss of Austria to Catholicism and of Holland to Protestantism, but also the beginning of the end of a somewhat unitary Western civilization. Iberia, France, Italy and Greece, together with several other minor powers, would become the civilization of the Counter-Reform. It would be mirrored by minor similar civilizations of different religions, chiefly Russian Orthodoxy, in its opposition not simply to all other religions, but also to what Pope Innocent XII would later scathingly call "relativism": the tolerance and secularization that was to become the main feature of the Lituo-Polski and British Empires (as well as of the Dutch one). These two mindsets would now part ways forever. Differences Down the Line The long Colonial Wars of 1740-1769 shifted the fault lines again. Most of the time, the two alliances fought against each other, even though they also attacked non-European powers, and the Iberians had a squabble with the French around 1756. The French colony in Québec was conquered by the famed Lituo-Polski Admiral Mindaugas Radziwill, and the Iberians lost African colonies to the British. The Austrians successfully freed themselves from the Iberian domination and set up what would later become the Austro-Slavian Empire; on the other hand, the Iberians held South America in an iron grip and expanded in the Mediterranean. That expansion ended with the forced conversion of Greece from Orthodoxy to Catholicism. Exhaustion brought about a peace treaty in 1769, but the divide had been deepened during the wars. Indeed, while South America saw several uprisings against Iberian domination, the so-called "radicals" made very little headway in the British colonies, once the Crown accorded fair representation (along with fair taxation) to the settlers. And the tolerance of the English and Lituo-Polskis apparently drew more admirers than the narrow-minded fanaticism of their rivals. The Scandinavian countries, while conserving their preference for the Protestant confessions, moved to the "Western" sphere of influence. The personal Union of the crowns of England and Holland was achieved in 1778. The trend seemed to take root within different civilizations. Surprisingly, the Ottoman Empire, too, became more tolerant in its own way. And once the Anglo-Dutch and the Lituo-Polskis began negotiating for concessions in the Far East, they discovered that the Chinese Empire (including Japan, Korea, the Siberian Pacific coastline and much of South-East Asia) was more cosmopolitan than they expected. Today It's now 1821. Technologically, Jagiello-2 is moving somewhat faster than Homeline at this point in its history, with short steam-powered rail lines for passengers and goods already connecting many ports to coal mines and other destinations in England, Silesia, New England and elsewhere. Steam-powered tugs are common in ports, rivers and canals. The policies of the Lituo-Polski and English dynasties have not changed the instinctive mistrust among different religions and ethnic groups, nor the temptation of majorities to discriminate minorities. However, their governments almost always opposed such tendencies instead of exploiting them. A ruling class chiefly made of an open-minded, cosmopolitan nobility became the backbone of both empires, while bigoted individuals got sidetracked. Both empires are currently as strong and healthy as possible within a TL5 civilization. Both are constitutional monarchies, Litua-Polskia with just one parliament of the noblemen. In both countries, voting rights still depend on wealth and gender, but not on religion, nationality or birth. The two empires are still good allies. Their rulers, decision-makers and intellectuals speak at least three languages. The Lituo-Polski crown rules over much of Central-Eastern Europe, with Romania, Germania (roughly Eastern Germany) and Crimea being its main satellites. It has a protectorate in Western Canada, as well the colonies of New Samogitia (Ivory Coast) and New Cracovia (Mauritius). It is the leading power in this civilization, and admired and imitated in Scandinavia and Vienna. The Austro-Slavians, however, use a peculiar "percentage" system for allocating power among their various nationalities. The Anglo-Dutch Empire is slightly more conservative, with a small number of important families brokering power-sharing agreements in London, and with slaves in the colonies. These span everything the British had gained by this year on Homeline, plus what were the USA on Homeline, plus lots of African plots that were in Spanish, French or Portuguese hands, and what was the Dutch Empire. The arch-enemy of this coalition remains Iberia, a stagnant, oppressive empire where being of "pure" Spanish Catholic blood still comes first. Needless to say, the empire is plagued by endless revolts in South America, riots in Lisbon and Milan, and religious strife in Athens and Tripoli. It's only a matter of time before a fracture takes place that will not be healed. That doesn't stop Iberia from trying to export its way of doing things; the Jesuit missionaries covertly infiltrate every place where there are Catholics. The rival of Iberia on the same side of the cultural divide is France. Now almost devoid of colonies, the country is rabidly nationalist, militarized, and busy strong-arming minor German princes and Swiss cities into its constellation of unhappy vassals. The king's and the French people's preferred commander, General Bonaparte, has subjugated the Belgians in 1811; they had unwisely tried to remain neutral between France and the Anglo-Dutch territories to the North. Moskvia is the main Orthodox country, and fierce at that. They are backward and bottled away from the seas, and presently have no chance against their hated traditional enemies in Vilnius. At least, not on the battlefield, but they are encouraging fanaticism among Slavic and Orthodox subjects of Litua-Polskia. The Ottoman Empire has expanded South, and is currently at war with Persia. Strangely, both countries have a relaxed Islam: you can have good alcoholic drinks, if not wine, in Istanbul. The fundamentalists are in the Mughal Empire and the self-proclaimed Caliphate in Sudan. The Chinese are not at all isolationist. They are studying the Westerners, and learning fast. They have trouble keeping the Japanese in their fold, though. Outworld Operations In Quantum 4, Jagiello-2 is out of reach for Centrum – at least, by conventional parachronic technology. But access to the place is still restricted by Infinity because this Earth seems to have more than its fair share of gates. In particular, a timed gate has been found to open on the night of June 20, each year, in a glade near Vilnius. The few Lituan pagans still gather to worship their deities in glades upon the solstice, but it's at dawn on June 21, not during the previous night. Since the Patrol has discovered Jagiello-2 only recently, they are still waiting for the next opportunity to send a team through. Other somewhat unstable gates have been reported in London, Amsterdam, Prague, Vienna, Rome, Boston, Kyoto and Peking. An argument is currently going on among Paralabs scientists. Are these gates so common, and mostly clustered close to the successful powers of this world, because whoever created them is more comfortable with tolerant governments? Or on the contrary, whoever created the gates also caused this uncharacteristic tendency in the rulers who lived in those locales? An analyst pointed out that the London gate apparently tends to open, from time to time, in a park in Richmond – that is, close to where Henry VII mostly lived as a king. On the other hand, it is possible these gates were found because the Scouts looked for them in those places. The Patrol has a more practical question, even though only time will answer it: who might show up next? If Centrum established a gate-head on Jagiello-2, they'd certainly start meddling with it. Speaking of meddling, neither Infinity itself, nor other Homeline forces have done anything yet; the discovery is too recent. Other Jagiellos Jagiello-1 is a quiet parallel. Lithuania, and in particular, initially, the namesake dynasty, saw some success, albeit nothing spectacular. The Polish-Lithuanian Confederation was stronger in the 1770s, and it was not dismembered by its powerful neighbors. Later on, it sided with Napoleon against those same neighbors, but after the Corsican's defeat, the Partition followed, in 1819. However, those additional decades as one country somehow fostered a rebirth: exactly a century later, in 1919, with Germany and Austria defeated, and Russia still embroiled in its Civil War, the Jagiellonian Confederation was born. Instead of going their separate ways, and fighting among themselves, the Poles and the Lithuanians formed a new state. Remarkably, it was now a three-sided partnership: it included the Ukrainians, and therefore a sizable part of their land. It's now 1933 on Jagiello-1, and the Confederation is under considerable strain again. The Poles are very much the senior partners, and some Ukrainian and Lithuanian nationalists resent that. Communism is hated and feared, just like the home of it, the Soviet Union. And the Germans, having lost East Prussia to the Confederation, are even more hostile than elsewhen. It doesn't help that the minor neighbors are unfriendly, too. Everyone has some claim on some Jagiellonian territory. Category:Fan Settings Category:Reality Classification Category:Quantum 4